PEM project ‘Kreisläufer’ conducts research into recyclable electric motors
There is a growing awareness in the industry that ‘design for recycling’ should be taken into account as early as the product development stage, and inspire product design that simplifies the subsequent recycling of the product. Given the difficulties in sourcing raw materials – keywords here include geopolitical conflicts and environmentally harmful mining – it makes perfect sense to ensure that products can be recycled as easily as possible and that the raw materials they contain can be returned to the cycle.
This also applies, of course, to electric car motors, which are now the focus of the PEM’s ‘Kreisläufer’ project. “Current product topologies and production processes in the field of electric motors are not designed for circular economy and recycling suitability,” said PEM director Prof. Achim Kampker: “As a result, critical materials such as copper and rare-earth elements, which are particularly important for Germany and Europe, are lost in current recycling processes.”
Neodymium, for example, is one of the rare earth elements: this valuable raw material is magnetic and a key component in most electric motors. Improving the recycling of neodymium would be a major advantage for electric motor production.
Until now, public attention has focused primarily on recycling the traction batteries of electric cars. Many companies have already committed themselves to this issue. Now, however, the ‘Kreisläufer’ project is focusing exclusively on electric motor recycling, demonstrating how relevant this topic is as well. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and aims to develop concepts for the sustainable design of electric motor rotors in collaboration with industrial partners from across the value chain.
The project aims to develop production processes that are suitable for a future circular economy. In addition, suitable dismantling processes for electric motor rotors are to be developed. A digital product passport is also planned, which will document information on the dismantling and recycling of electric motors. “In the future, this could enable flexible, large-scale disassembly of rotors,” added Kampker.
The project will run until August 2028, with Magnet-Physik Dr. Steingroever, Remondis and Wieland eTraction Systems as partners. Daimler Truck and Mubea Motorkomponenten are also on board as associated partners. The project’s creators hope that, ideally, it will be possible to recycle rotors on an industrial scale three to five years after the end of the project. This should make Germany more self-sufficient and independent in the supply chains for electric drives. There are also plans to gradually transfer the project results to the entire electric motor and electric drive train and, later on, to other areas such as industrial motors or generators for energy production.
Until recently, another project called ZIRKEL (Circular Production for Highly Integrated Components in Electromobility) was also working on the recycling of electric motors and traction batteries. Various remanufacturing processes for neodymium were tested, such as mechanical removal after prior separation of the laminated core or targeted removal using hydraulic presses. According to Fraunhofer IWU, this has resulted in a practical methodology for the recovery and reuse of magnets with as little damage as possible.
This article was first published by Florian Treiß for electrive’s German edition.
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